XVI
THE AVENGING SWORD
This fine Ballad (admired by Andrew Lang) is unique in its mingling of pagan and Christian sentiment. The hero, who in his Bersark blood-lust spares neither wife, maid, nor suckling—whose brother the sword is possessed by a demon—who has ranged the world in pursuit of revenge—ranges it again as a penitent pilgrim, bound, for the heavier penance, in iron chains. Since, however, the Ballads concern themselves little with ecclesiastical orthodoxy, the penance is depicted as ending, not at any saintly shrine, but at the grave of his enemy.
The belief that the warrior’s favourite weapons were animated by a mysterious personality is familiar to all students of Old Norse literature. One celebrated example occurs in Njàls Saga, 79, when Høgni, stealing out with Skarpheðinn by night to avenge the death of Gunnar, takes down the dead hero’s halberd, and hears it singing aloud. (The O.N. impersonal idiom, “it sang in the halberd,” hints at the indwelling soul.) “Then sprang up Rannveig (Gunnar’s mother) and cried in bitter wrath, ‘Who is taking the halberd, which I forbade all men to touch?’ ‘I would carry it,’ said Høgni, ‘to my father, that he may have it in Valhalla, and bear it at the Weapon Thing.’ ‘Further than that,’ said she, ‘wilt thou bear it, even to thy father’s avenging, for the halberd declares the death of one man or more.’”
That magical forces, once unchained, might end by destroying their liberator—that the naming of the name conferred power over the name’s possessor—are superstitions common to almost all primitive races.
Versions of this Ballad exist in Swedish, Norwegian, and Faroëse.
XVI
THE AVENGING SWORD
1
Sir Peter rode to the castle door,
The King of Danes he stood before.